If you read these serpentine ramblings you know I greatly admire the Venerable Denny Hatch.
Denny, with almost demented dedication, has over the last 26 years created the world’s largest organised direct mail library – over 200,000 samples.
But what is more important, he knows what worked – and what didn’t, and can tell you why, because he knows more than anyone about the subject.
18 years ago I rang his wife, Peggy (who is as able as he is!) to ask how many mailings he read a month.
“Between one and two thousand,” she replied. “Mind you, he doesn’t read all of them all through.”
“I should bloody well hope not,” I thought. “The poor man would end up in a loony bin if he did.”
Anyhow, since that time, Denny’s mammoth compendium of the best mailings ever - Million $$$ Mailings, created with Axel Andersson - has been my secret weapon.
I use it to cheat.
I thumb through it for inspiration – and for ideas to steal, adapt and use in seminars. It contains 71 of the most successful mailings ever written. Only last month I wrote something that pulled like an express train based on one line I spotted and “improved”.
I refer to it more than Caples, more than Hopkins, more than Ogilvy.
The only problem is, it is a WHACKING GREAT TOME, 477 pages long – I yearn to beat up recalcitrant clients with it. I can’t find the ideas I want quickly. And it is 18 years old, so some important new stuff is not in it.
Now, praise the Lord, Denny has come up with something that’s bang up-to-date, and a lot shorter. So I can find tested ideas to steal in minutes.
It’s a report called The Secrets of Emotional Hot-ButtonCopywriting. You can get it at http://hotbuttoncopywriting.com/.
But to call it a report does it too little justice. It is atreasure trove. I flipped it open just now and immediately saw an extraordinary opening line “I’m sitting in my wheelchair today, mad as hell” … imagine what that could do for your e-mail opening rates!
(Do not think for a second that what applies in direct mail does not apply online. It is pretty much all relevant – and the examples you see are from the best of the best in a business that has been around for centuries, not decades).
As the title says, the report is based on the turbulent, gnawing human emotions – the hot buttons – that make your customers buy. And it features the best mailings of the last 20 years. Only Denny could have put it together, because only Denny has this astonishing archive of material.
And Denny does something so many fail to do: he tells you WHY things work. You will never get this from some of the hyped-up piffle that sails into your inbox every day.
A friend just forwarded me (as a joke) one of those emails that say “all you need is this set of DVDs and booklets and your copy will “write itself” automatically.
What drivel!
Here, for $89, you can get what you really need – theCopy Thieves’ Almanac. I may use one of the mailings in a speech I make in a week’s time. I will certainly adapt another for some work I have to do for an investment client.
Here again is where to order: http://hotbuttoncopywriting.com/.
Why not make it the next thing you do? Just one idea could double the response from your next effort. I have seen it happen. I know.
Best,
Drayton
http://directmarketingcourse.com/
www.commonsensedirectmarketing.com
Filed under advertising, copywriting, Dedication, Denny Hatch, direct mail, Drayton Bird, E Mail, Inspiration, marketing, Ogilvy, Secret Weapon, Seminars by on Jun 29th, 2010. Comment. 
If you follow all these disjointed ramblings you know I vented a little spleen last week about an e-mail I got, and said I would run a series of webinars on better writing.
- Many people realise that bad writing holds back careers, plays havoc and bedevils business.
- The people who want to improve are often the people who are good already. The useless carry on regardless. So, the good get better and the bad fall further behind.
- Quality matters more than technique. If what you offer is appealing even bad writing, within reason, won’t kill it as long as the benefits are clearly described, which they were in this case.
A delightful story was told by the great cartoonist and writer Thurber about the eccentric editor of the New Yorker magazine, Harold Ross.
Ross was a gloomy nit-picker, hardly ever satisfied, and with little apparent sense of humour. On the rare occasion when he saw a contribution he liked he would murmur, “I am encouraged to go on.”
Well, I am encouraged to go on – I have a few other subjects that may interest you like positioning, fund-raising, briefing, research and testing, brand building, how to present, how to be a good creative director, creative analysis and so on.
Let me know if any of those sound interesting, please – or if you have any other suggestions.
I will now prepare the better writing webinars. They will chiefly be concerned with writing to persuade – but cover everything from what to do before you write and how to manage your time to how to get ideas, with advice on better writing from George Orwell and much more.
So if more of you are interested, let me know that too.
Best,
Drayton
Websites: www.commonsensedirectmarketing.com / www.eadim.com
Filed under Copywriters, copywriting, Creative Analysis, Creative Director, Denny Hatch, Drayton Bird, E Mail, New Yorker Magazine, Quality Matters, Webinars by on Jun 10th, 2010. Comment.
Do you know what single thing in modern life annoys people more than any other?
Here’s a clue.
Yes. The dear old automated touch-tone system.
And I learned what irritates business people most a few weeks ago. It’s people using jargon in meetings. In fact a few years ago I read that over 25% of business executives admitted to using jargon they didn’t understand in meetings
No wonder, then, that when it comes to selling technological things so many messages dissolve into a sort of linguistic swamp.
Here’s a good example from an e-mail someone sent me this morning:
At Blah-co we have just developed an email stationery online software package that allows one in house member of staff to deploy all email users with a professionally designed Email stationery template, designed by one of our team of designers to all users and to include their unique contact details, meaning not only will the presentation of their emails improve but equally as important all be consistent throughout your organisation. (whew!)
Because of the way the templates are constructed our solutions avoid all types filtering ensuring your mail always arrives.
Well, I think I understand the beginning and the end and recognize all the words but I’m damned if I know what they mean when put together.
Here’s another series of examples extracted from mailings sent by another firm.
“Are you one of those lucky few who have bedded down IT operations?”
“Would you realise a significant increase in business agility, accelerated decision making, employees pursuing a common agenda and a heightened awareness of your strategy?”
“Miss or ignore priority system availability or leadership messages”
“Adopting a new change driver that communicates change and strategy in a high impact and engaging way”
“Intranets suffer the limitations of pull technology”
“A controlled feedback channel enables you to capture a snapshot of employee morale in real time”
“Cascade this down to your people”
They actually have something great to sell, so I tried to translate their stuff into English.
Every day, you send tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of e-mails to people who want or need to hear from you.
Maybe they’re your colleagues, your customers, your employees or your prospects: many may actually have asked to hear from you.
Then what happens?
Your “wanted” messages get lost in a sea of Spam. So the poor recipients go through the infuriating task of fishing out what really interests them from all that rubbish.
A **** sends your messages on a different route. One that avoids the traffic jams. It’s a desktop alert that jumps onto your screen no matter what you’re doing. You can’t ignore it; it appears whether you’re onscreen or off.
And that’s why firms as varied as Sky, Arsenal Football Club. Kelloggs and Warner Brothers use them.
Winston Churchill said, “Use simple words everyone knows, then everyone will understand.”
This is important especially if you’re selling a financial or technical product or service. Use a bit of jargon to reassure the anoraks, but put the rest in English.
So just to repeat, beware jargon, stick to plain English. And NEVER run a 70 word sentence like the one from Blah-co at the top.
And please don’t use words like “access” as in “access the world’s leading independent experts and other practitioners” when you mean “hear” or “meet” – which is what someone invited me to do when I was drafting this. Maybe they thought they were sounding important. I thought it sounded pompous and silly.
Oh, and if all else fails, just e-mail me: we sell the weirdest stuff pretty well.
Best,
Drayton
P.S. This is number 13 of Drayton Bird’s 101 free helpful marketing ideas. You can sign up on the link below for the rest.
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Website: www.draytonbirdcommonsense.com / www.eadim.com
Filed under Business Agility, copywriting, Drayton Bird, E Mail, High Impact, Jargon, Touch Tone by on May 14th, 2010. Comment.
I just got a message from “The IDMF Team”. The people who run the International Direct Marketing Fair.
What is this obsession with initials? Aren’t there enough around? And what is this obsession with teams? Are we all playing football?
It’s like being greeted by “the onboard team” – when I was on the train hopelessly delayed somewhere between Stafford and Crewe.
- If I want to reply to this message, who do I reply to? (I did – and got no response).
- Come to that, do you like dealing with a “team” or would you prefer to talk to one person and maybe build a relationship?
- “Team” is a negation of direct marketing – and service – which are about serving individuals better, based on their special characteristics.
- Somebody made a fortune by calling it “one-to-one” marketing – which it isn’t, by the way.
Don’t be a team – unless you’ve got 11 heads. Write from me to you.
By the way, their e-mail included a game. They call it an involvement device as it sounds posher than game – but which would you prefer? A game or an involvement device?
The team told me it was “an innovative” idea.
That’s a word people use because they think it sounds a posher than new. Actually it sounds like something you’ve heard a million times before – and it bores you.
It really means something less than new. Sort of “new-like“.
Don’t use hackneyed language like that, please. It makes you sound like a politician.
Best,
Drayton
P.S. This is number 10 of Drayton Bird’s 101 free helpful marketing ideas. You can sign up on the link below for the rest.
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Website: www.draytonbirdcommonsense.com / www.eadim.com
Click here to get 101 free helpful marketing ideas. Marketers from all over the world think they’re a pot of gold.
Filed under copywriting, Drayton Bird, E Mail, Fortune, International Direct Marketing, Relationship by on May 10th, 2010. Comment.
Just kidding – but you’ll see why in a minute.
Recently, after scrupulous research over many months, my partner Marta decided to buy a new flat screen TV, which she did through Amazon.
They use Parcelforce – “proud winners of Business in The Community’s Healthy Workplaces Award 2006″, who also seem rather excited because “Hitwise have recognised our online developments this year”.
It’s good to know they’re all slaving away in such a splendid environment and such hot stuff on-line, though I wonder what exactly “on-line developments” are.
It was their touching attention to things that don’t really matter to their customers that prompted my heading. Because if you want to talk to them there is even a text phone number for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
But what if, like Marta, you want to get a TV set delivered?
What if they’re so useless they can’t tell you even vaguely when it is likely to arrive – just any time between 8:00 am and 6 p.m. on a certain day?
And what if they couldn’t even get the day right – so you spend 10 hours waiting – and it still hasn’t arrived?
Then, what if the much-praised on-line developments tell you it’s just arrived at 7:34 pm – which you know is a lie because you and two other people are looking out of the window?
And what if after you (eventually) get a reply from somebody on the phone – during a call you’re paying for – which confirms that they do indeed only deliver – or in this case fail to deliver – between 8 and 6?
What then?
Well, you hang around the next morning till it does arrive.
Then you get an e-mail saying “Thank you for using our website” – with an apology, kind regards and of course details of the deaf phone number I mentioned, signed by an “Internet Advisor”.
Hey, guess what, Parcelforce? I don’t want internet advice. There are plenty of people like BT Broadband screwing me around on-line already, and they need no help from you.
I want you to deliver things. That’s all you have to do. That’s why Amazon (mistakenly, it seems) use you.
I’d like to sue the useless layabouts for taking Marta away from what she does extremely well and gets paid for – write copy.
But instead I’ll just mention, for the second time in this series, the book below.
This book suggests you should try and do a proper job before you do anything else – or blether on about your irrelevant awards and your pleasant environment. How hard is that to understand?
Oddly enough many years ago Parcelforce were clients of mine, but they were then called Post Office Parcels.
They changed their name and spent a lot of time, money and executive angst over their new image. I used to wonder whether they should have invested it in doing a better job.
Now I have no doubt.
Best,
Drayton
P.S. This is number 48 of Drayton Bird’s 101 free helpful marketing ideas. You can sign up on the link below for the rest.
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Website: www.draytonbird.com / www.eadim.com
Click here to get 101 free helpful marketing ideas. Marketers from all over the world think they’re a pot of gold.
Filed under Drayton Bird, E Mail, marketing by on Apr 1st, 2010. Comment.
Here’s a quickie for you today.
Do you know that dire old joke about a man waiting for the bus who had a carrot in his ear?
A helpful passer-by said, “Excuse me, do you know there’s a carrot stuck in your ear?”
The reply (in case you didn’t know) was, “Sorry, I can’t hear you. I’ve got a carrot stuck in my ear”.
Ba-doom!
Sorry about that – I’ll find a better joke next time.
But the reason I told it was that it’s relevant, because quite a few businesses have carrots stuck in their ears, and it’s costing them a fortune.
I gave you a good example not long ago – the “IDMF Team” – that hydra-headed beast that sends out e-mails – but doesn’t reply.
But there are plenty more: usually people who broadcast e-mails, but also big, fat, lazy, greedy, stupid firms like AOL – which fittingly rhymes with rot in hell.
Not to mention all the people like them who ask you to fill in a questionnaire about their alleged service – then never reply to a specific comment you have, let alone tell you what the results of the survey were.
Years ago the direct marketing business was often called the direct response business. But of course, it’s not a one-way affair – and those who act as though it is are being exceptionally stupid.
Always make it easy for people to respond and never send out a message where they can’t.
That means, if they want to write, let them; if they want to phone, let them; if they want to e-mail, let them. And if they want to come and see you, let them.
There’s an old phrase that applies: the customer is always right
Rather obvious, you may say – but many seemingly intelligent people running big organisations ignore it.
Who are the biggest culprits? Probably the banks and broadband “suppliers”. True, they often allow you to reply – nowadays usually to somewhere in India.
And I feel really sorry for the poor souls who answer. They don’t know Streatham from Iceland, they’re given a script which makes no allowances for anything beyond the predictable, and they’re being harassed to handle so many calls an hour.
Of course the consequence of all this never occurs to the supercilious “strategic planners” in Canary Wharf.
They get away with it, in the case of things like broadband because when everyone wants it, marketing doesn’t matter.
But it will all come back to haunt these people as increasingly we sheep refuse to be shorn so easily.
And there are two reasons:
1. The internet, which allows people to shout their grievances to the world.
2. Competition.
You don’t believe me? Well, remember when the banks only opened when it suited them.
They’ve come a long way – but not far enough.
Enough of this ranting!
Best,
Drayton
P.S. This is number 21 of Drayton Bird’s 101 free helpful marketing ideas. You can sign up on the link below for the rest.
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Website: www.draytonbirdcommonsense.com / www.eadim.com
Click here to get 101 free helpful marketing ideas. Marketers from all over the world think they’re a pot of gold.
The Drayton Bird Blog – please do not visit if you are easily offended.
Filed under direct marketing, direct response, Drayton Bird, E Mail, Fortune, marketing, Response Business by on Feb 15th, 2010. Comment.
This piece is about millions of pounds that are wasted every year – needlessly.
It all starts with that wonderful word “strategy”. There’s a lot of hot air about it in marketing.
The word comes from the Greek for general. What does it mean?
Using your forces to achieve an objective as effectively as possible:
In business, that means getting the maximum profit with the minimum necessary effort and cost.
Or in the words of former Coca Cola marketing boss, Sergio Zyman, “Selling more stuff more often to more people at higher prices”
Most marketers spend prodigious time and effort looking for business, whilst ignoring money that’s just waiting to be picked up – money we already have within our grasp, but don’t realise it, or forget it.
The prime example: enquiries you have received, but don’t try to convert with enough determination, intelligence or vigour.
Let me explain – and see if you agree.
Sounds sensible – but is crazy
Compare two communications.
One is a mailing or e-mail to people a marketer thinks might be prospects. “Cold” prospects.
The marketer has put an immense amount of effort into it. It’s got every trick in the book, because getting a response from someone you don’t know is hard. Makes sense, right?
The other is a reply to someone who’s enquired about something. A brochure or other material and a letter thanking the respondent for the enquiry and suggesting they read the brochure and order now.
If it’s being done on-line it will be a simple thank you and a suggestion to visit the website
This is a much easier task, as the respondent has already expressed interest. So that makes sense, right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong – a thousand times WRONG!
Because what seems to make sense is in fact senseless.
And that is where the vanishing millions are.
For though it is indeed true that selling cold is harder than selling to warm enquirers, it is even more true that the EASY money is amongst those warm enquiries.
So more effort, not less, should be applied to them. They really deserve every trick in the book. They have raised their hands and said, “I’m here! I’m interested! Come and get me!”
They are infinitely more likely to reply. Just consider: for one of our clients a cold mailing might get .1% response – and that would be a good result. If someone had enquired they might get five times that percentage
In fact I bet there is more money lying around waiting to be picked up because of this than anywhere else in your business. And not just because many take these enquiries for granted as “easy” sales and don’t try hard enough.
But also because they don’t follow them up enough – which you should do, as one of my favourite clients put it, “until they give in”.
Because they will buy when they want to buy – not when it suits you.
To sum up:
If you want more than your fair share of the lost millions -
- Put more effort into enquiry responses than into cold mailings
- Follow up until it doesn’t pay any more.
So there are two thoughts for you.
Best – and thanks to those who have sent kind messages.
Drayton
P.S. This is the sixth of Drayton Bird’s 101 free helpful marketing ideas. You can sign up on the link below for the rest.
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Website: http://www.draytonbird.com / www.eadim.com
Click here to get 101 free helpful marketing ideas. Marketers from all over the world think they’re a pot of gold.
The Drayton Bird Blog – please do not visit if you are easily offended.
Filed under E Mail, Easy Money, Marketer, Marketers, marketing, Maximum Profit, Prospects by on Nov 3rd, 2009. Comment.
